It has become increasingly popular to provide papermakers fabrics, particularly press felts, with selectively joinable seams so that the ends of the felt may be brought together and joined on the papermaking machines. This facilitates replacement of the fabrics, which often are very large and stiff and awkward to install when formed as endless belts. In most papermaking fabrics the filaments used for weaving the fabrics are significantly smaller in diameter than those used as pintles in the seams used to hold the ends of the fabric together. This has tended to restrict the use of pin seams to fabrics employing multi-layer weave patterns and has also tended to impose additional stress and wear on the seam area, due to its greater thickness than other parts of the fabric. Such additional stress has resulted from the frequently greater thickness of the pintle than adjacent cross direction yarns and the absence of crimping of the pintle causing an abrupt increase in caliper at the seam, thus causing a bumping or other interference as that seam passes over portions of the papermaking apparatus or through the nip of opposed rollers. These disadvantages have limited the use of the desirable pin seam despite the additional benefits, particularly in ease of installation, that such seamed fabrics provide.